Every Facet of New York City Life Could Be Affected by a
Transit Strike

This banner doesn't
exactly tempt readers with its novelty, now does it?

The story itself, by
AP Writer Ula Ilnytzky, is a well-done round-up of the many ways New York
City’s commercial existence would be deeply harmed if the transit workers
violate the recent court order to refrain from withholding their services.

It is well worth
remembering how fragile the city’s recovery has been since September 11, and
this controversy won’t help. Even the threat of the strike has probably
already convinced many would-be tourists to avoid the risk of being caught
in Manhattan without an easy way off the island.

The report outlined
the basic bargaining positions thus far:

The union is seeking 6 percent annual raises over three years. The MTA,
facing a $1 billion-dollar deficit and contemplating a fare increase, is
offering no raise the first year and possible raises the following two
years tied to productivity increases.

Looks to me like there’s a middle
ground in there both sides could reach with a little help from the State, a
significant participant in MTA’s overall financial support.

Note: Of course there’s
a pun in this post’s title. Some standards are well worth maintaining.

Karlyn Barker of the
Washington Post wrote a story about the D.C. Commission on the Arts and
Humanities that might make some folks a bit more careful about their future
dealings with the agency.

Earlier this year the
Commission sponsored the popular Party Animals sculpture exhibits that
graced the District with well-done, creative, and frequently amusing donkey
and elephant statuary.

The overall plan for
the exhibits included auctioning off most of the statues to raise money for
other arts programs.

The only problem is
that the Commission managed to finagle the auction so that the agency won
the bids for nine specific statues.

To make things even
more interesting, the Commission didn’t actually pay for the artwork they
acquired during the auction.

They had their
reasons, as they viewed the situation:

"We selected some to keep to maintain a legacy and to
put in places that might normally not be able to participate in the
auction," [Executive Director Anthony] Gittens said. "The way to do this
was for the arts commission to place a bid. . . . The winning bids were
our bids."

Not counting the
Commission’s bogus bids, the rest of the statues brought in over $925,000 in
live and online bidding. One elephant brought in $12,500.

Barker tracked down
one professional auctioneer who explained the problem:

Virginia Weschler, executive vice president of the
Adam A. Weschler & Sons auction house in the District, said charity
auctions "are always goofy, but these are people who didn't understand the
ramifications" of what they did.

"They should never have offered them if they had no
intention of selling them," she said.

In the commercial world, Weschler said, "this would
be an act of fraud." But charity auctions, she said, "fall outside the
law" because they are not licensed. Still, "it's terribly unfair, and
morally and ethically wrong. . . . They've probably ruined their chances
of ever doing a similar fundraiser."

For some reason, the
Commission’s statuary set-asides did not include one of the more famous
elephant sculptures in the series.

Perhaps it brought up
bad memories.

I refer, of course,
to the PETA-sponsored elephant I wrote about
last August.

He wears a blanket reading,
"The CIRCUS is Coming, See SHACKLES – BULL HOOKS – LONELINESS All Under
The 'Big Top.'"

A U.S. District Court
judge ordered that the “Ella PhantzPeril” statue had to be accepted by the
Commission, because at least two other accepted entrants had also conveyed
messages deemed inconsistent with the Commission’s stated preferences.

In early February
2001, Randy Orr (definitely not Ralphie’s brother, BTW) showed himself to be
a bold brazen article, as the nuns at my parochial school used to say.

He held up a credit
union in Fairview, Pennsylvania all by himself, and initially escaped with
$65,468.00.

Here is how the court
described the armed robbery:

After entering
the bank, Orr told the manager to kneel, face the wall, and put her hands
on her head. He then held his gun to the head of the assistant manager and
directed her to empty a metal cash box into a garbage bag.

Thanks to a friend of
Orr’s who tipped off the investigators, he was caught. Orr pled guilty to
using a dangerous weapon in connection with bank robbery, and received an
enhanced sentence of 50 months' imprisonment.

On appeal, Orr
challenged the increased prison time, arguing that

(1) the
[dismantled] pellet gun he used in the robbery was not a "dangerous
weapon," and (2) he had not "otherwise used" but had merely"brandished"
the gun….

The Court didn’t
think much of these arguments.

The unanimous panel
first dealt with the claim that the pellet gun was not such a big deal:

a dismantled
pellet gun is a dangerous weapon in its own right. In this connection, the
government argues that even the frame of the pellet gun could inflict
serious injury if wielded as a weapon….We agree and hold that a dismantled
pellet gun which could be used as a bludgeon is a "dangerous weapon"….

Then the court
dismissed the notion that Orr had merely
“brandished”
his weapon, justifying something less than the punishment he received:

"Brandished"
means that "all or part of the weapon was displayed, or the presence of
the weapon was otherwise made known to another person, in order to
intimidate that person, regardless of whether the weapon was directly
visible to that person." [citation omitted.] "Otherwise used" means that
the conduct "did not amount to the discharge of a firearm but was more
than brandishing, displaying, or possessing a firearm or other dangerous
weapon." [citation omitted.]….

[T]he District
Court correctly found that pointing a gun at the head of the assistant
manager and ordering her to empty money into a garbage bag was a "specific
threat" directed at her and was precisely the type of conduct which
satisfies the "otherwise used" requirement.

Considering the
facts of this case, and the timing of the opinion’s release, it would have
been nice to see the Third Circuit also quote the critical passages from
The Christmas Story, when discussing the dangerous qualities of pellet
guns.

The other day the Man Without Qualities kindly
posteda version of the St. Thomas More
Prayer.

The British martyr is considered the patron saint of
lawyers and politicians. There are several local chapters of the St. Thomas
More Society in the United States, some of whom have their ownwebsites.

Reading the More prayer was inspirational:

The Blogger's Prayer

Lord, grant that I may be
graceful in my writing, both in tone and intent.Help me avoid snap judgments of other's motives, as I
work to keep untainted my own motivations for writing.
Let me stay focused on the merits of an argument, and keep me from
resorting to ad hominem attacks.
Give me the strength to be candid with my readers, while respecting the
privacy of those whose words and deeds inspire my writing.
Sit with me at my computer, and help me understand what others seek to
say.
Read with me online, and be by my side as I write.

Amen.

December 11, 2002When your
nine pounds of methamphetamine absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, don’t be
surprised if someone takes notice.*

This week the
Eighth
Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal drug law conviction of Juan Mederos Gomez, against Fourth Amendment claims relating to how the
government discovered he was to receive over nine pounds of methamphetamine.

The legal issues in
the case were fairly routine as these cases go. On the other hand, the
government’s drug interdiction efforts that led to the seizure of that
startling amount of speed were pretty interesting.

In late April 2001,
ten national guardsmen joined Medrano and 39 other postal inspectors at the
United States Postal Service Express Mail hub in Indianapolis. The mail
pieces moved along a conveyor belt during the sorting and transfer
operation, which continued past 2 a.m.

One Express Mail
package, marked for “next-day by noon”
delivery that day to Minneapolis, attracted just enough attention to cause
an inspector to bring it to Medrano, standing about 20 yards away.

Here’s why this
package also made Medrano suspicious, based on his training and experience:

Express Mail
next-day noon delivery is preferred by those sending contraband
“because it is reliable and trackable, and obviously faster.”

The package’s size
and weight—fourteen inches square and nearly twelve pounds—was
“unusually large for person-to-person mail, as the hand-written label
indicated it was.” Ninety-five per cent
of Express Mail is business-related, and personal Express Mail packages
are usually much smaller. In contrast, “in Medrano’s experience,
illegal drugs are often sent through the mail enclosed in larger items.”

The sender paid
cash for the $37.55 Express Mail postage charge.

The Friday
send/Saturday receive arrangement itself was a factor. Medrano believes
that “drug dealers speculated that fewer drug interdiction efforts
were being conducted on weekends.”

The package came
from LaBrea, California, “a
known source city” for illegal drugs.

The package was
heavily taped, a possible “attempt to thwart a drug-detection dog.”

A “FRAGILE” stamp on the package, combined with the common surname for sender
and receiver, “reflected an attempt to ‘legitimize’ the package.”
The sender also misspelled the name Anthony, leading
Medrano to suspect that was “perhaps not the sender’s true name.”

Medrano detained the
package, based on these initial impressions. A few hours later, he contacted
the mail carriers in both LaBrea and Minneapolis who handled the routes at
the sender and receiver addresses. They confirmed that the addresses were
legitimate, but that the names didn’t match the addresses.

At that point, the
inspectors brought in a drug-detection dog named Wendy. She “alerted”
to the package. (The dogs also “alerted” to 29 other packages out of the
thirty-five selected for closer inspection during that one shift.)

After the alert,
Medrano prepared a search warrant application, and successfully obtained a
U.S. Magistrate’s authorization early Saturday evening.

The inspectors then
opened the package, and found the methamphetamine. They arranged for a
controlled delivery to Gomez on Monday, April 30, who was then arrested.

Gomez’ legal
challenge centered on whether Medrano had enough reasonable suspicion to
detain the package and take the time to contact the mail carriers in
California and Minnesota. On this record, neither the District nor the
Eighth Circuit had much difficulty in upholding the reasonableness of the
government’s crime detection efforts.

In fact, the
appellate court was pretty blunt about it:

The large, heavily-taped
Express Mail package, voluntarily deposited in the mail in California for
delivery by the USPS hundreds of miles away in Minnesota, virtually begged
for the attention of a postal inspector.

And that’s not a bad
thing; at least, not when it involves over nine pounds of
methamphetamine.

Or at least, something so similar that it sounded
completely unforced a few days ago.

According to the Mississippi newspaper, Thurmond and
Lott addressed the crowd at a November 1980 political rally:

After Thurmond spoke against federal pre-emption of state laws, Lott told
the more than 1,000 people present, "You know, if we had elected this man 30
years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."

According to the
Washington Post, one of Senator Lott's spokesmen offered the following
explanation:

"Clearly, Senator Lott was expressing his support for Ronald Reagan's
policies of smaller government and fiscal responsibility."

Somehow I doubt that's so clear a statement. At least,
that it's a clear statement as that spokesman described it. In fact, given
the 1948 Dixiecrat platform to which Senator Lott implicitly referred, it's
perfectly understandable how others might feel it conveys certain other
sentiments, not nearly so neutral in tone.

As my father says when he's, shall we say, a bit
exasperated, "Jesus H. Priest!"

Last April I wrote
about an aspect of our federal structure that even Judge Stephen Reinhardt might agree fits one of the original
understandings of the phrase.

The U.S. Supreme
Court is handling a lawsuit brought under its original jurisdiction, between
the State of Maryland and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

From the Maryland
perspective, it involves a fight against sprawl. From the Virginia
perspective, it involves a fight over state's attempt to provide critical
public services.

What’s unusual is
that Maryland tried to block development in Virginia, by claiming the right
to force a Virginia water agency to obtain a Maryland permit to build a new
water intake system in the middle of the Potomac River.

Maryland eventually
granted this permit, but the case continued because of the certainty that
the same issue would recur.

[T]he
1632 Charter from King Charles I
granted the entire river to Maryland. However,
a 1785 compact between the two states gave Virginia residents the right
to use the river and even build structures on it, as long as the
improvements did not affect navigation….

Given the colonial-era understanding of the term "navigation," I believe
that Virginia will eventually win this suit, as long as it can show that the
intake pipe system presents no real hazard to the ability of maritime
traffic to use the Potomac. Since any sane water system design would already
take that into account, I really doubt that this $11 million project runs
that risk.

Turns out I guessed
correctly. The
Washington Post reported today that Special Master Ralph Lancaster filed
a report recommending that the Supreme Court rule in favor of Virginia.

Maryland
now has an opportunity to file exceptions to the report, and final arguments
may be heard before the Court this spring.

On the other hand,
it’s pretty rare for Master recommendations to be overturned.

Lancaster’s
report is
97 pages long, not counting the appendices. It is well worth reading, both
for those interested in colonial-era history and those interested in the
ongoing debate over development in the Washington
metropolitan area.

The passages in the
Brief beginning at page 46 should be illuminating for those few innocent
folks who may continue to believe that environmental disputes are always
fought on the merits.

For example:

… Maryland
stipulated that the … offshore intake would not adversely impact any
boating interests. It stipulated that the intake would not adversely
affect Potomac River fisheries.It also stipulated that
Maryland’s right to issue a Section 401 Water Quality Certification,
pursuant to the federal Clean Water Act, had been waived by operation of
law, because no decision had been rendered in more than a year from the
date of the application. [footnotes omitted]…

[The] Final
Decision …concluded: “The record establishes that the proposed intake is
likely to provide better quality raw water, which will reduce the need for
treatment to remove solids and thereby reduce the risk of human error in
the treatment process. The record further indicates that with minimum
adverse impacts to the river, the proposed intake will lower the risk from
waterborne pathogens, disinfection byproducts, oil spills and other
contaminants, reduce blockages of the intake from ice, leaves and grass
and reduce the Authority’s treatment costs.”

…On November 7,
2000, Governor Glendening’s office issued a press release maintaining that
“Maryland continues to vigorously object to the issuance of a permit for
the proposed intake pipe.”The press release stated that
the Governor remained concerned that the offshore intake project would
cause “irreparable environmental damage” in the form of urban “sprawl.”The claim that urban “sprawl”
would result from the project had not been urged by [Maryland] in the
contested case proceeding itself.

I wonder if the new
Democratic (VA) and Republican (MD) governors will feel quite the same way
about this case as their predecessors did, considering the switch in party
affiliation experienced in both administrations.

Two more links worth reading about
Trent Lott, from decidedly different perspectives:

Max Sawicky
doesn't wake up every day wondering out loud why he should go on living, in
stark contrast to some of his fellow leftists. His remarks about Lott won't
please Republicans by any means, but also remind Democrats to maintain a
sense of proportion about their own party's failings in race relations.

Robert
George wrote a great piece about why Lott shouldn't serve as the next
Majority Leader, pointing to several examples from the past in addition to
this latest idiotic fiasco, made worse by the completely inadequate
non-apology apology. George's essay and his prior work on the Republican
National Committee may help convince wavering Republican Senators to find a
better man (or woman) to lead the next session.

Just in time for this
semester’s college finals, the
Associated Press
reported today on a disturbing new trend:

Professors Troubled by Parents
Complaining on Behalf of College Students

Reporter Steve
Giegerich described several examples of parent/professor interaction that I
simply can’t imagine would have occurred when I was an undergraduate a few
decades ago:

[A]ngry parents … complain about their children's
grades.

Faculty members also say moms and dads sometimes
pressure officials to register students in mandatory courses that are
filled to capacity and question the intent of classroom assignments….

A parent last month asked a Western Washington
instructor if her son could reschedule an exam because it conflicted with
a planned family vacation…. The request was denied.

One sociology
professor at Louisiana Tech told Giegerich that he

wants parents to feel comfortable contacting him, but
said he drew the line recently when a mother wanted to tape record a
discussion about her son.

Other professors are
a bit less diplomatic in their assessment:

"They don't realize that sometimes they just have to
let little Johnny stumble and make his own mistakes and learn from them,"
said Teresa Sherwood, assistant chair of the mathematics department at
Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.

"They just have a hard time letting go."

A few instructors
also pointed to the high cost of college education, and the natural interest
of parents in making sure their “investment” is worth it.

I discussed this
story tonight with our older daughter, a sophomore who’s in the middle of
her fall semester finals this week. She was as surprised as I was.

I understood immediately what the caption writer
intended by using the quotation marks. The story carried the headline's
intent even further:

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf read a statement on
state television from the president saying: "we apologize to God for any
deed that angered him in the past, which we might not have known of and is
blamed on us." He said: "and on this basis we also apologize to you," the
Kuwaitis.

On the television news last night, I watched the
Kuwaiti spokesman react to this non-apology apology in much the same way
that my wife did. His language was a bit more diplomatic, however.

At least two of our country's current leaders need to
be reminded of that fact--Trent Lott and Bernard Law.

Senator Lott's
recent remarks about the opportunity the country allegedly missed with
the Dixiecrats' loss in in the 1948 presidential election shows that he has
no business being the Senate Majority Leader in the next Congress.

Virginia Postrel's
December 7 post about Lott
should be required reading in every newsroom with any dealings with him.

I don't care if his people
or others
say he was just kidding. First, the context in which he said it doesn't fit
with any actual joke-telling intentions. Second, there really are some
things you just don't joke about; at least, not if you're in a leadership
position and want to be taken seriously in any other context.

To some extent, the latest revelations about the Boston
Archdiocese simply pile on the already massive amount of evidence of
literally sinful mismanagement by Cardinal Law. In stark contrast to the
usual deference shown cardinals by priests, a Boston group of clerics has
finally worked up enough courage to
call for
Law's resignation.

Good. He should take their advice, and soon. Others can
clean up the mess he made. His own efforts thus far have proven to be too
tentative, too defensive, and too little.

For some folks, it's hard to imagine a world in which
they are not among those in charge. They could use a little perspective.

Official small print disclaimer: This is, after all, a personal web site. Any
opinions or comments I express here are my own, and don't necessarily reflect the official
position of my work as a government attorney or any of my clients.

That fact may become obvious later on,
but it needs to be said here anyway.